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Casey Copier Arch 3850 Professor Lisa Henry Benham Landscape Beginnings My almost three-year-old daughter, Vienna, was lying in bed before we shut off the lights for the night. Vienna looked up and started a conversation, Daddy? While talking to me, I noticed she was twirling her hair with her pointer finger. I looked up at my wife and asked, When did she start doing that? My Wife said that she didnt know but had also noticed it recently. She then asked Vienna where she learned it, but there was no answer. I asked, Isnt it normal for girls to twirl their hair? My wife replied, Not really when its that short and for a child that young. A few days later, we were watching the Disney movie Tangled when we realized Disney princess Rapunzel twirls her hair in the exact same manner. Not long after that, Vienna was brushing my wifes hair and said, Mommys hairs long like Tangled. Its pretty huh? These experiences led me to question how much of my daughter is created by my wife and me vs. Walt Disney. These experiences and other events along with further research led me to believe there is more that makes up who each of us are than just genetics. Society, people, and events surrounding each of us as we mature must have a vast impact on who each becomes. One study shows evidence of a startling discovery, which implies that childrens minds internalize movies to remember them as real events and experiences.
Growing evidence suggests that memories are dynamic, fluid, and situationally bound constructions that are influenced by the context in which they are produced. Strong versions of social constructivism imply that memory reconstructions are highly plastic and provide little reason to believe that reconstructions would be similar across different remembering contexts. However, memory research shows that reconstructions of events become relatively stable after an

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initial period of malleability. This stability means that the social construction of event memories in conversations could have developmental significance. (Pasupathi, M. 2001).

This means childrens ideologies and beliefs are shaped and cultivated by fictional entertainment. This is just one demonstration of the powerful influence Disney has on the minds of youth today. Disney is also an example of a company that uses the idea of hegemony. It is a multibillion dollar-a- year business that uses the majority of peoples beliefs and values to create an ideal and uses that for entertainment.
The hegemony model of culture and the media reveals dominant ideological formations and discourses as a shifting terrain of consensus, struggle, and compromise rather than as an instrument of a monolithic, one-dimensional ideology that is forced on the underlying population from above by a unified ruling class . . .. The hegemony approach analyzes television as part of a process of economic, political, social, and cultural struggle. According to this approach, different classes, sectors of capital, and social groups compete for social dominance and attempt to impose their visions, interests, and a gendason society as a whole. Hegemony is thus a shifting, complex, and open phenomenon, always subject to contestation and upheaval. Pasupathi, M. (2001).

These examples show how powerful the impact of Disney is and will continue to be on shaping young minds throughout future generations. If we are aware of how strong this influence is, perhaps we will be more careful to limit its impact on our children. While every girl wants to look and maybe sound like a Disney princess, our example for these young people should be the driving influence in their lives, for we want to be the ones teaching the true purpose of existence and our core ideologies, whatever they may be. Walt Disney was known for extensive research when creating a film. He spent a great deal of time and money paying attention to the smallest detail; his factories were compared to scientific labs:
More than simple factories, however, Disneys facilities were often compared to scientific laboratories and were described in such obsessive detail in the companys public relations, from a state-of-the-art air-condition system that filtered out cell-damaging dust, right down to its paint-

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mixing operation. In its press book for Snow White (1937), Disney depicted the color scheme of the movie as deriving from months of research. (Sammond, Nicholas, pg. 117)

If the color took so long to research, how much thought went into the storyline and which audience to target for production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In a news article, which was released just prior to the release of Snow White, hi-lighted in yellow it says:
The heroine of snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has been devised to appear the ideal girl, for she has been given the qualities which most appealed to Walt Disneys corps of talented young men who pooled their efforts to create herAs to her personality artists had the freedom of invention. The snow white of the film is an adorable girl, with her sweetness enhanced by vivacity, a free play of emotion and a definite sense of humor. (Sammond, Nicholas, pg. 170).

This quote shows evidence of how much planning was taken to come up with the ideal girl. In the last part of the sentence the words caught my eye were sweetness enhanced. As we think about the concept of social construction and how simple things can affect young girls, the identity of what a young lady should be is changing. Enhanced sweetness is a small example of how Disney movies are changing young girls. When considering how much Disney movies such as Snow White affect the children who watch them here is an interesting quote to think about:
In Disneyland the display 'It's a Small World' led an eight-year old enthusiastically to remark on the watches with hands rushing around, that 'even the watches are made for children, for they [the children] always find that the time passes so slowly'. (Christensen, P.H.)

This is interesting statement that shows how deeply these laboratories affect children in these processes. There are many underlying messages in Snow White. Most of these messages teach young girls that their ultimate fulfillment in life will come only from marriage and caring for children. For a time Snow White is hiding from her stepmother in the woods and ends up in a small cottage inhabited by seven dwarfs. Snow White is then Snow White is the perfect wife and mother of that era-beautiful, submissive, patient and kind. She does what shes told and is the epitome of sweetness. As Snow White cleans, cooks, and cares for the dwarfs, she is happily

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singing all the while. Another message to women is that they are helpless without a man to protect them. Snow White is vulnerable to her evil stepmother unless the dwarfs are there or later in the movie when the prince comes to rescue her. These womanly qualities as portrayed by a Disney princess movie were the ideal for most of society in the 1930s. As the world changes, so do the values and beliefs of our society. Disney movies have also evolved. From one of the first princess movies, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to one of the most recent, The Princess and the Frog, there are immense differences and levels of complexity. The Princess and the Frog shows much progression of many years of social change since the release of the movie Snow White. My Disney influenced daughter spoken of in the opening paragraph is also an avid watcher of The Princess and the Frog. As she and I have watched the movie for an unknown number of times togethor, I am still noticing the complexities of the changes in our nation that have happened since the release of Snow White, which are subtly a part of The Princess and the Frog. There are a number of examples, which show where our nation has come since the making of Snow White. The Princess and the Frog seems to be an anomaly in tearing down the idea of what a traditional Disney princess is. Tiana, the main character, is an every-day girl from the lowerclass ghetto of New Orleans. She veraciously avoids love and marriage and almost anything social. Her focus is on working hard to save enough money to buy her own restaurant. In contrast, her best friend Charlottes sole purpose in life is to marry a prince. The girl who marries the prince in the end is the one who broke the traditional characteristics of someone worthy of a prince. There seems to be a push away from the traditional princess identity for Disney, while

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trying to show that because society has changed it is ok for the type of girl to become a princess to change also. Personally, I found the changes in The Princess and the Frog very refreshing. I want my daughters to set goals and have aspirations. I want them to use their gifts and talents to make a difference in the world. I dont want them to waste their prime years of life sitting around waiting for prince charming to sweep them of their feet. I want them to have marriage and family too if the time is right, but I dont want them to think their life is empty if that doesnt happen. In his book, Babes in Tomorrowland: Disney and the Making of the American Child Nicholas Sammond supports this point of view:
The women of the pioneer West took the love of gentleness and beauty with them into the scrub and sand, the heat and blizzards, and were not defeated. The struggle they began goes on today, nearer to triumph. They and their building men did not wait for institutions to grow. They made flexible and open institutions which have survived the transformations of industrial life[This leadership] is latent in American life [and] that we can accomplish our deep ambition to make our culture common to nearly everyone. These leaders are a natural product of our time. (Sammond, Nicholas, pg. 297).

Women should be taught to be strong, independent, capable leaders in our world. They should be taught that they have much to contribute to society. They should have dreams, goals, and aspirations. While these characteristics of the princess and the frog seem to be very contradictive of what a traditional princess is, the broken line of typical princesses is stitched back together when Tiana (the frog princess), takes a journey through the forest. This time spent in the forest is a change in the traditional scene of the everyday life Tiana lives in New Orleans, which to me is representing a change in Tianas behavior from strong, independent, capable, to dependent and weakened. At one point she is captured and prince Navine then has to rescue her.

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In the movie Winters Bone, a young woman Ree, finds herself responsible to care for her family. In order to care for her family Ree has to break away from the assigned path that society has put her in. In this new path there is awkwardness in which those around Ree find it hard to know how to interact with her, and in some aspects she is walking multiple paths of female/male socially formed roles. There is an interesting relation to the movies previously mentioned: Snow White, and The Princess and the Frog, and Winters Bone. The previous example from Winters Bone is what influenced my thoughts to look at the socially constructed landscape, and raised the question: where does it all begin, and what is happening at this beginning? For me seeing my daughter twirl her hair as a Disney princess does and speak of moms hair as being pretty just like a Disney princess was an The physical and social landscape and our response to it are a large part of what shapes us into what we will one day become. It is in better understanding of the social and physical landscape that we can better become who we want to be. In the beginning of this paper I began by revealing the practices of Walt Disney to create the ideal girl as portrayed by Snow White. As can be seen there is something very interesting and exciting to be discovered when considering the physical and social influences that are placed upon individuals that are first born; these influences form young individuals and assign them a place in the path throughout the landscape.

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